Utah Senator Pays Price Back Home for Shutdown

By Neil King Jr.

SALT LAKE CITY—Republican Sen. Ted Cruz received a standing ovation from supporters at a GOP event when he returned home to Texas after the 16-day government shutdown.

That hasn’t been the case here for Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, his staunchest ally in pursuing the strategy that led to the shutdown. The state’s freshman senator has found a cold shoulder since returning to one of the reddest states in the country.

Critics in the Republican Party, including former governors and sitting legislative leaders, openly blame Mr. Lee for helping chart a course they say weakened the party’s standing nationally and dented a state economy reliant on tourists drawn to its national parks.

“Among the tea party, Mike Lee is a rock star,” said Holly Richardson, a former Republican state lawmaker and political commentator. “Among everyone else, not so much. There’s real unhappiness about what he has done to Utah and to the image of the Republican Party.”

The debate over Mr. Lee’s role in the shutdown is part of a broader struggle over the future of not just the Utah GOP but the national party, one that both tea-party activists and the Republican establishment expect to play out for months.

Even before the shutdown brought Mr. Lee to national prominence, some Utah party and business leaders had begun a $1 million petition drive to overturn the state’s caucus system that brought him to power. That system, which gives grass roots delegates a large say in picking party nominees, toppled incumbent GOP Sen. Robert Bennett—a more conventional conservative—in 2010 amid a wave of anger over passage of the health-care law. Mr. Lee went on to win the seat that November.

Fallout from the government shutdown, which ended last week, has opened a rift between the GOP’s activist flank and its more business-minded, establishment wing. National business groups say they are reconsidering which Republican candidates they should support.

That divide is particularly stark in heavily Republican Utah, which gave Mitt Romney his largest margin of victory in last year’s presidential election. Former Gov. Jon Huntsman describes the sentiment among Utah Republicans toward Mr. Lee, his former general counsel, as one of “widespread discontentment over how Mike Lee has handled his priorities in the Senate.”

“There is now massive, unparalleled frustration among mainstream Republicans toward the actions of a few in our party,” said Republican Kirk Jowers, who directs the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Discussions with more than a dozen party leaders and lawmakers found widespread support for Mr. Lee’s quest to unravel the health law championed by President Barack Obama, which helped to provoke the shutdown. But many fault Mr. Lee for a championing what they saw as a combative, unrealistic strategy that fueled dissension within the GOP, battered its public image and harmed the state.

“Our last chance to overturn Obamacare is to retake the Senate next year, and what Mike did in helping shut down the government made that a lot harder,” said Dan Liljenquist, a former GOP state senator who lost a GOP challenge last year to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah).

Since returning to Utah on Friday, Mr. Lee has made no public appearances and has none planned for the rest of the week. In an interview, he said he is catching up on calls while spending time with his family at home in Alpine, 45 minutes south of Salt Lake City.

“Utahns don’t like fighting in Washington, and they certainly didn’t like the fighting that led to the government shutdown,” Mr. Lee said, explaining the negative reaction locally to his role in the shutdown. But he thinks he will be vindicated: “I believe that over the next year, Obamacare will become even more unpopular, so that people we see what this was all about.”

Others agree. “You are going to have people angry at you whenever you take on a really tough issue,” said Utah GOP chairman James Evans. “But over time, people will come around to Mike’s views as he continues to articulate them.”

Still, even some of Mr. Lee’s backers note the contrast in the post-shutdown reception given to Mr. Cruz, who according to news accounts received an eight-minute ovation from hundreds ofpeople at a Texas GOP women’s group meeting Saturday, and Mr. Lee.

“Republicans here are polarized, no question about it,” said Spencer Stokes, who served for two years as Mr. Lee’s Senate chief of staff. “So, Ted Cruz went home to a standing ovation, and Mike Lee has hardly wanted to go shopping for fear of being confronted.”

Republican circles are now rife with talk of who might challenge Mr. Lee in 2016. So far, no one is firmly raising a hand. But the Count My Vote initiative to do away with the state’s caucus system, backed by many of the state’s largest GOP donors and business names, represents perhaps the best-organized effort in the country to counteract the tea-party wave in the 2010 elections.

Mr. Lee could face a tougher route to re-election in 2016 if GOP caucuses are replaced with a direct primary. That would allow a more centrist candidate to make an appeal to all Republican voters, not just the activists who dominate caucuses, political observers say.

Signs of Utah’s unhappiness over the shutdown are in plain view. A huge billboard along the route in from the airport thanks Republican Gov. Gary Herbert for reopening the state’s eight national parks during the shutdown with a $1.7 million check to the federal government.

Utah’s top radio talk show host, Republican Doug Wright, has persistently blasted Mr. Lee’s tactics on air. A running poll on the conservative station’s website has 81% of listeners describing Sen. Lee’s role in the budget battle as “a fool’s errand.”

A Brigham Young University poll taken in the midst of the shutdown battle showed the freshman senator’s approval rating falling to 40%, the lowest rating for a sitting Utah senator in years. Among Republicans, Mr. Lee’s favorable ratings were little different from those of Rep. Jim Matheson, the state’s lone Democrat in Congress.

“Lee looks vulnerable to a challenge from within his party, but the real danger could be a challenge in a general election from the right kind of moderate Democrat,” said Quin Monson, who directs the Utah Voter Poll at Brigham Young University.

Neither Mr. Lee nor the state GOP are showing signs of thriving financially, as many of the big state donors look elsewhere. Despite his national prominence, the senator raised just $249,000 in the past quarter through September, about a fifth of what Mr. Cruz raised, and emerged with just $52,000 in cash on hand.

By comparison, local Republican Mayor Mia Love pulled in just over $1 million in the same period for her second attempt to topple Mr. Matheson.

Pushing back against local criticism, some allies of Mr. Lee say anger at the senator is merely a remnant of the animosity that establishment Republicans still harbor over the defeat of Mr. Bennett. Moreover, Lee spokesman Brian Phillips notes that a large majority of the Utah legislature in March voted for a resolution calling on the Utah delegation to use “all means possible” to block the implementation of the health care law.

In an email, Mr. Phillips said, “Mike Lee is the only one DOING the things the overwhelming majority of legislators SAY they want done.”